Kldekari

Kldekari, the “rock gate,” is a fortress and pass in Georgia's Trialeti Mountains near Manglisi. Its rocky height overlooks the country toward Tsalka and Manglisi to the south and the Tana and Tedzami valleys to the north. Roads cut through the ridge connected eastern Georgia with southern lands, giving the stronghold significance far beyond its immediate surroundings.

The fortress became the seat of the Liparitid lords after their arrival in Trialeti in the ninth century. Their struggles with Georgian kings made Kldekari a conspicuous name in the history of royal unification. By the later Middle Ages, however, the old duchy had disappeared and the fortress featured less prominently in chronicles. The surviving landscape also includes Rkoni monastery in the Tedzami valley, whose buildings developed between the seventh and seventeenth centuries. Together the pass, fortress and monastic valley preserve different layers of this mountain corridor's history. The former ducal stronghold thus stood within a corridor where mountain roads, monastic buildings and memories of royal authority outlasted the political power of the family that had made it famous.